Welcome to Xaranya

Book 2 – The Knight’s Tale

Chapter 4 – The Drowned God Lives

Most of the guards and residents of Tilton can breathe underwater, and therefore this punishment only works on visitors or newcomers for the most part.

Susan stood inside the air-filled airlock, while the guards held her, but they need not have bothered. Shock held her in place regardless, Shock and a more than vague question.

Why? Why was any of this happening?

What had she done? What had any of them done to deserve this?

And then, the outer door opened and water flooded in. To be more accurate, it exploded in. The water was … dense, miles below the surface dense.

The water hit Susan in the face like a punch, like an explosion of punches all across her body.

The guards braced themselves, as Susan would have if she had known what was about to happen.

She would have collapsed from the pain, probably, but instead she passed out and felt nothing at all. Sensory overwhelm. Probably.

After that it gets rather technical, meaning the number of rules Tilton was bending but not quite breaking.

Susan didn’t know or care about any of that of course.

All she knew was that when she woke up she was drowning without dying, each breath a labor. She floated on her back, held in place by silvery chains that made it impossible to move. She had no idea how long she stayed that way – and we only know it was two hours because eventually this entire series of events would become a matter of very public record.

A couple of hours later, she was hauled back inside Tilton, where a distressed Chief Magicker stood ready to question her. But first, he gave her time to breathe, to vomit up water and to breathe air.

Once she was able to talk, now back in her cell, the Magicker asked more questions, gave more threats, et cetera.

Susan still knew nothing. She would have said what she knew, would have told him why she was really there, except she had already.

“We know you are a spy for the evil one. Your lies are not going to help you.”

At about that time, Susan was thinking about two things she had found out from watching the occasional spy drama on television. First, everyone would break eventually if tortured. Second, the intel gathered from torture was often faulty, because … honestly.

If she could have said something that would end this conversation, she would have done so.

Part of her wanted to pledge fealty to the dark lord, just to do it, to see what – if anything, this would change. For a wild few moments, she went there. Maybe if she pledged fealty or said she already had – oops, totally forgot, I am on the side of the dark lord.

But then, readers, but then she would have had to give more details that she did not have. About where the dark lord was and how to find him, why she had joined his dark lord army – or whatever.

Come to think of it, she could have probably come up with something, but she was emotionally shutting down. She was realizing that no matter what they were going to throw her out there again and that nothing she did, nothing she said was going to stop that from happening and she was … shutting down, dissociating, not even really there anymore.

FYI, this is what is known as a trauma response. It’s the emotional equivalent by an emotional wall of water and it is too fast for you to even respond at first and then the second time, when you see it coming, even if maybe you could do something (but maybe you simply can’t) this time you are already primed, to freeze in place. So, you do.

No thought required, so thought goes … elsewhere.

This time, Susan stands in the airlock and knows what is coming and that makes it so much worse. She is not expecting that, honestly thinks that this time if she just braces for the sudden rush of water that maybe… It is a stupid thought. This time, she screams and that means her mouth is open and this time she does not pass out, so she feels the sudden pressure.

Feels the part where her skin should – probably – just break. Her bones should probably just break, and she should probably be dead now.

But no. She really is a Level 5 [Warrior] and therefore under the level 10 barrier and therefore “protected” from the injury but not from the pain.

That is – in retrospect (really someone should make a list) – part of the reason they are doing this to her, to get her to reveal herself, her real class, her real title.

Because how on Xaranya did she wind up in the throne room of all places?

Likely story.

You can see where they are coming from.

You can perhaps imagine the argument going on – yet again – about what to do about this stranger, this interloper, how to keep Tilton safe.

Among other things, Tilton might be a smidge Xenophobic at the moment, because of a history, a context that wouldn’t matter to Susan right now.

It was there, while buried deep beneath the water, there that she had a vision of Svelan, no first, she had a chat response, a very confusing one but … more on that later.

Something in the chat response, a very confusing response regarding someone called Karol, who was about to be born and was having their external interface setup. And what did any of that even mean?

And then, that response triggered the vision. Or perhaps she was imagining the whole thing.

Regardless, the form of Svalen, pale gray as the ocean floor in front of her, pale gray and yet alive somehow, appeared in front of her.

“Susan,” the gigantic form said, speaking through the water, speaking as if he were everywhere. “Be free from your prison.”

If only it could be that simple, she thought wearily.

“BE FREE FROM YOUR PRISON!” the voice shouted this time, shattering the bonds and … changing her, making her something else, something capable of surviving. “You will be my messenger,” the floating form said to her, but she was out of there, not even listening, not caring. She did not notice that she could breathe underwater now, that she now had an ability called [Deep Water Breathing], at max level no less. None of that would have mattered much, anyway, if she had noticed. No, she just wanted out of there. Completely understandable.

She began swimming upward, knowing that it would take a while but that was okay. She was ready to be out of there, to be away from whatever this was. It takes a while, almost an hour in fact, but finally she breaks through to the open air. Finally, she is bobbing in the open ocean, no sign of land in sight, but that’s okay. It’s fine. It is better than being down there even one moment longer….

Then, she’s looking at the in-world map, finding the nearest starter town: Avalon of Melphisti.

It would take her a while to get there, but that was okay. It would be okay except for one thing.

“Damn it,” she says to no one in particular.

Now, she’s angry. Now, she has a purpose that she can’t just walk away from.

What really clinches the matter for her is that she knows in her heart that if she goes to Melphisti now … they must know. People have to know – on some level – what is going on down there.

They must know and be ignoring it and therefore swimming to Melphisti – whatever that even means, whatever Melphisti even is, would not help them. On the contrary, because she knows this one too. She knows this one. It will mean listening to comfortable people tell her there, there, little girl. Don’t overthink things. Stay in your lane. The kind of people who – if she had listened … she would have never discovered that well-meaning people can be wrong. And sometimes you need to be the hero in the story. Sometimes you need to take care of the thing yourself.

Now, she is well and truly angry. In a way she remembers, that wakes her up to who she has always been, not so deep down.

Now, Susan is feeling her old, part-Roma grandmother with her stories. Now she’s thinking of Baba Yaga and about things that are wilder and more magical than you can imagine, things which are both funny and also profoundly dangerous.

She is thinking about little girls on paths where helping that tiny ant, helping that little, tiny … whatever could make the difference between life and death, being eaten by the dragon or having the help of the tiny ant later, to help you defeat the dragon.

She thinks of Baba Yaga in her terrifying murder cottage and the wish of so many little girls to climb in that gods-damned cottage, take it over, and do something better with it, something still terrifying but … better. (Maybe that’s just her, but no, Susan. It is not just you, I want to say. Me too. Let’s do something … crazy. Let’s be crazy little witches together, but you know in a good way.)

And then, with just enough anger to propel her onward, she dives beneath the water to see what the actual what is going on with these people.

She’s ready for the path that will lead if not to heaven then at least to the Happy Ending, the best possible ending for her anyway, the one she can live with, forever.

And – perhaps – to laugh at whatever God might tell her otherwise, because like God knows, like God has ever known what it is really like to be anything else but God, to be her. To be an actual person.